President Rodrigo Duterte is greeted by officials and shakes hands with Ronald Dela Rosa at NAIA Terminal 2 in Pasay City before departing for Vietnam, September 28. (Robinson Niñal/Presidential Photo via Wikimedia)
The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC), welcomed the decision by Pre-Trial I to unseal the arrest warrant for Ronald Marapon “Bato” dela Rosa over the infamous “war on drugs” campaign between 2016 and 2022. Dela Rosa is a former Chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) under former President Rodrigo Duterte and currently is a Philippine senator.
Dela Rosa had been evading arrest since November 6, 2025. He was allegedly responsible for crimes against humanity and extrajudicial killings as an “indirect co-perpetrator” committed between 3 July 2016 and April 2018. After being absent from the Senate since November 11, 2025, he resurfaced on May 11 in a leadership vote, joining 12 other senators in replacing Senator President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III with Alan Peter Cayetano.
His reappearance did not go uncontested. On the same day, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) attempted to arrest him inside the Senate building. In response, Dela Rosa and former President Duterte filed an extremely urgent supplemental manifestation with motion to prevent local law enforcement officers from arresting him based on the ICC warrant.
Five Senate members, however, stated that the Senate would not grant any institutional refuge for Dela Rosa. Through Senate Resolution No. 395, Senators Francis Pangilinan, Vicente Sotto III, Panfilo Lacson, Risa Hontiveros, and Paolo Benigno Aquino IV urged him to “voluntarily surrender to the proper authorities and seek judicial remedies in accordance with the Constitution and applicable laws and rules.”
The charges against Dela Rosa are rooted in one of the bloodiest chapters of modern Philippine history. Between 2016 and 2022, Duterte’s “war on drugs” campaign—which bypassed any formal trials in favour of direct enforcement—left over 6,000 official deaths according to the PNP. However, some independent human rights groups and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) estimated the death toll to be as high as 27,000, including innocent bystanders and children and mostly urban poor.
Dela Rosa’s case manifests the unprecedented record of Philippine domestic friction and international justice mechanisms, with his fate now determined by both ICC trials and the power play within the Senate.
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